


A is for Alistair

by chileancarmenere



Series: Alistair Alphabet [1]
Category: Dragon Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-22
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 23:18:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/325275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chileancarmenere/pseuds/chileancarmenere





	A is for Alistair

He is five years old when Eamon tells him where he got his name from.

It comes just after the “your mother was a serving girl, and you’re a bastard, and your father may just have been King Maric” talk. After that, it’s a little hard to shock him any more.

After all, before that he had just assumed that he was an orphan stable boy; one that didn’t do many chores, and one that the arl checked in on rather frequently, but Alistair doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

As for Eamon, he realized that the kid had a “I’m only accepting what you’re telling me because I’m expecting to wake up shortly” look on his face, so he thinks he might as well go the whole hog and say “Your mother died before you could name you. I named you Alistair for her. It means ‘defender of men.’”

Alistair nods, his face still slack. It takes a while to sink in that what he defines himself by, his name, what encompasses him as _himself_ , is something that a distant relation threw at him because his mother died, choking from exhaustion, before she could even see him.

He had built up a nice little fantasy world in his head. In that world, he was a stable boy because his mother had been forced to give him up at birth. She was torn away cruelly, while tragic harp music played in the background, but she vowed that she would come back for him and then Alistair would know true family, and never be parted from her ever again. She held the image of his face in her memory every night, whispered his name to herself before she laid her cheek down on her pillow, and promised again that someday she would come back for him. He figured that he had to have had a father, because he knows that kids have fathers, but he never built up a fantasy around him. He doesn’t see fathers tucking their children in every night, brushing their hair carefully, and this is what he wants.

He knew that it was a fantasy the whole time, because the rational part of his mind knew he was an orphan, but he is only five years old and he wants some faint hope to cling to, some light at the end of the tunnel that tells him that he has more in life to look forward to than a lonely, second-class existence.

What he doesn’t want is this: a heavy burden, of being someone important but unwanted, someone who has to be protected and cherished because of an accident of birth, rather than for himself.

Eamon awkwardly pats the kid’s knee. “It’s a lot to take in. Why don’t you go in and get dinner?” Eamon wishes that he knew more about talking to children, but he has none himself and doesn’t socialize with them very much.

“Why did you call me Alistair?” Alistair asks, picking at a hangnail.

“I…” Eamon hesitates. The last thing he wants to say is that his captain-at-arms was talking about his cousin Alistair that night, and the name was stuck in his head, so he makes up something on the spot. “It’s an honorable name. Defender of men. I want you to remember that anyone and everyone, no matter their birth, can be honorable and serve mankind. The highest calling that anyone can ever have is to serve and protect others.”


End file.
